Echoes in the Dark
by ember53608
Summary: There's an ice cream shop on the corner of Clinton Street; they've been there a few times before, usually on Valentine's Day. As she remembers, he always orders plain chocolate, she a different flavor every time. The tradition hasn't yet changed, and she's afraid that it will now.


**My feelings towards the relationships that M'gann and Conner have been in are. . . contradictory, in a sense. But lemme just sum them up this way:**

**- I hated SuperMartian in the first season.  
- I loved them in the second season.  
- I hated Angelfish, but sympathized with La'gaan.  
- I took up Neverland no sweat.  
- But I still loved my SuperMartian. **

**Haha, yeah, they're an interesting pair. But anyway, angst up ahead - you have been warned!**

**Disclaimer: M'gann wouldn't have asked for Conner like a total _idiot_ - and right after La'gaan left the room, too - and obvious mess if I'd owned the show. Nope. Not acceptable.**

* * *

_Can we talk?_

He flinches at her touch, for almost the first time in years. She's in the loft's kitchen, baking her infamous apple pie. He smells it from the main hall, where he's reviewing intel with other members of the team. It's his favorite recipe after her chocolate chip cookies, and he can't remember a time he's denied a slice.

He hopes she doesn't offer one now.

_Here?_

She knows it's an automatic approval, and before going on, considers whether it's alright to be asking him to go somewhere else. With her. Alone.

_Actually, I was thinking. . ._

He lets out a puff of air; whether it's out of frustration or for the pure intent of breathing, he doesn't know. No reason at all, maybe. "I'm heading out," he tells the others, stuffing his hands into his pockets and making his way up the stairs. She watches him from where she stands in front of the oven.

Her heart skips a beat.

* * *

There's an ice cream shop on the corner of Clinton Street; they've been there a few times before, usually on Valentine's Day. As she remembers, he always orders plain chocolate, she a different flavor every time. The tradition hasn't yet changed, and she's afraid that it will now.

They walk apart from each other, him a few feet in front, gently pushing past the bustling crowds of Metropolis. She follows him, barely grasping onto the sight of his windswept hair. Every now and then, she loses him in the crowd, only managing to find him again from the whisper of his thoughts floating on the air.

The shop closes in less than an hour; it doesn't give them much time, but maybe just enough. He pushes past the door, doesn't see her coming right up the corner. It swings gently into her face, and he turns around, his eyes widening the slightest bit. She gives him a small smile, as if to say she's okay.

He can't deny that his heart rate settles down.

As they walk inside, her mind scours the elaborate list of flavors. Reaching into her purse's back pocket, she pulls out a wrinkled piece of paper, its blue lines faded from age. Scrawled in ballpoint pen are the seventeen flavors she's tried thus far. The first one, she notices, is chocolate.

Taking her gaze off the momentous word, she looks to the teenager standing before her. His red hair flies everywhere, and the only way in which he covers it is with a cap. As her gaze shifts downward, she sees that his pants are sagging a bit much for her pleasure.

"I'll take a medium French vanilla." Her request is curt and full of distaste. Conner glances curiously at her, but doesn't say a word. Instead, his blue eyes search the endless flavors; just as she was secretly hoping, he orders chocolate.

They take a table near the back of the shop, with both of their initials scratched onto its wooden underside. She thinks they did that the year they graduated high school, but she can't be sure. Their romantic pastimes have long since evaded her mind.

The atmosphere is quiet and awkward for a while. He bores his eyes into the two or three scoops of ice cream stacked into his paper cup. She looks out the window, glimpsing every few seconds a pair of hands clasped together; some fingers are adorned with rings.

"So, Wendy Harris?" The fated name escapes her lips, and whether it's in vain or in question, she's not sure. All she can tell is that it hurts to let out the truth after holding it in for so long, as if it were somehow a lie.

He looks up at her, surprised that she knows. A pang of guilt hits his chest; he's realized in that reaction that he would never have told her. He actually would have thought that she didn't need to know.

It scares him to know that that's true.

She avoids his gaze, looking back out the window. The sun's light hits her eyes, but she ignores the golden rays. Her spoon swirls in a slowly melting pool of leftover ice cream she's too tired to take in - it's nearly the entire last scoop.

_Nightwing told me._

This statement, on the other hand, doesn't surprise him in the least. In fact, he remembers telling the team's leader only a few days before that he'd be out with Wendy, and to let anyone know if they asked. The mere fact that _she_ was the one to ask, though, is a bit too coincidental for his pleasure.

He doesn't give her any answer. And it's not because he can't find one, but rather because no answer would ever be sufficient. Not in her eyes.

(His cup is empty.)

"La'gaan really hasn't said anything, has he?" One hand rests at the back of her neck, the other nestled in her lap - a gesture he knows is commonly translated among humans as a sign of being uncomfortable or embarrassed. And now that he thinks about it, her cheeks have taken on a slightly rosy hue.

"About what?"

He smiles a little on the inside, because it's her turn to let out that fated puff of air. And not that she's been staring at him all this time, but her eyes seem to wander farther away from his at her next statement.

_I dumped him._

For what's been the past few seconds, the smallest pool of chocolate ice cream has been swirling about the back of his mouth. What he thinks will stay behind his teeth and lips, though, comes spurting out as he coughs violently at her blunt revelation. A little startled, she looks about awkwardly, then levitates a napkin in his direction.

He takes it gratefully, wiping away every last drop of melted ice cream staining the wooden table.

"Because of me?" His attempt to hide the incredulity in his voice is awful, and he can't help but notice her flinch. He decides that he might apologize later, if he has the heart or bravery to do so.

"No," she replies, _not at first. _

(He never hears the second part.)

For once in their conversation - which has thus far spanned over a time of twenty seven minutes - she meets his gaze. The amber hue of her pupils hits him full in the face, and for a moment he finds himself staring.

Reality, of course, comes crashing down near milliseconds later.

"I'm as undeserving of you as I am of him," - she closes her eyes; her voice is a whisper - "and there's nothing that can change that."

They're the last words she utters to him at that table aloud.

* * *

The doors of the shop lock into place behind them. It's only two minutes before closing time, but the chance of another couple sitting down for some ice cream and a pep talk is unlikely.

Their history of endless chocolate and eighteen other flavors has finally come to an end.

Pulling her sweater around herself a little tighter - there's a wind blowing - she turns to the left. The zeta tube is only a few blocks away, and she figures that they can walk in awkward silence just fine.

The only problem with the scenario, though, is the fact that he turns right, and not left.

_You aren't coming back to the loft? _She makes her way through the maze of people, not stopping to wait for him to answer. Telepathy makes things easier that way.

_No, I-_

_ Wendy?_ The name is bouncing off the walls of his mind; it has a nice ring to it, she notices. She's reminded of the dreamy and fascinating way in which Peter Pan says it in the movies.

_Yeah, something like that._

She stops to listen to his voice. Though it's well hidden, there's the slightest hint of annoyance in his response to her.

["Get out of my _head_!"]

"Hey, _hey_, lady, watch it!" She apologizes absentmindedly to whomever it is that she disrupted with her presence. They shoot back a few choice words and move on, but she doesn't hear a sound that they make.

Looking out into the bustling streets, she glimpses the ice cream shop on the corner of Clinton Street. The lights are out, and the wooden tables blend in with the looming shadows. The employee from before heads outside to dump the trash bin out in the back. An earlier decision not to save the spoon with which she ate her ice cream - the shop has a different one for each flavor - is something she's starting to regret.

But then she remembers that the other seventeen that she had were blown up in a fiery explosion, and that it would be ever so pointless to keep the last one.

(Or so she convinces herself.)

More and more people begin to complain at her unwanted presence, and she's reminded that she hasn't said anything in response to his blunt reply. Thinking that somehow the wind might carry her voice, she slows and says, "Have a good night, Conner."

There isn't any answer.

She figures that he's already gotten far enough to where he can't hear her voice and, albeit unwillingly, begins to walk in the direction of the zeta tube, which by now is still the ever expansive seven blocks away. Her pace is quick and brisk, and like him she pushes past the people that are in her way. Her gaze doesn't have any definite focus, but her eyes stare straight ahead, met with whatever.

She's so intent on making her way home that she doesn't hear his voice in her head when he replies.

_You, too, M'gann._

But little does he know that she's long since cut off the mental connection, or rather sealed her own voice from his mind. _Wendy? _is the last time that she'll ever venture inside, and she proves it by giving him a night's farewell when she knows that he's already blocks away.

Of course, absent from her mind at the time is the knowledge that regarding her cutoff is the clone of the ultimate savior. The clone of a man who can see through barriers and walls. The clone of a man who can fly at the speed of sound, maybe even a little faster.

The clone of a man who can pick out a person's voice from almost a mile away.

The minute she utters a sound, he hears it. He always will hear it, whether it be in the past, present, or future.

Because after all, who can take her voice from his mind when it's been there for all of his life?

* * *

"True love will triump in the end - which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, then it's the most beautiful lie we have."

_John Green_

* * *

**And the result of all of my confused feelings clashing over another? A fic in which SuperMartian is utterly destroyed and Neverland is free to carry on, which in many cases doesn't satisfy me at all. **

**Sorry, guys, but angst is definitely my strong point when it comes to writing. It's a sad fact. :'(**

**Review, please?**

**~ember**


End file.
